Re: 132 Columns...

Hi Fred,

You say that you don't want to use xt5250 or X11 -- but you don't say what you DO want to use, so it's hard to offer suggestions. I'm going to assume that you're running this in console mode?

The font_80 and font_132 config keywords tell TN5250 to send an escape sequence that tells the 'xterm' program included in X11 to change it's font. They won't have any impact whatsoever in console mode.

The fonts, including the number of rows and columns available, in console mode tend to be implemented in hardware, and which ones are available depends heavily on your video card, and how well that video card is supported by your kernel's console driver. My experience is that all video cards today support 80x25 mode and very little else, since they all expect to be used by Windows or X11 where everything is rendered in raster graphics anyway, and therefore it makes little sense to spend money on providing lots of different text modes.

That doesn't mean that 132 columns aren't possible... they may be. But you'll need to write a shell script that sets the console to at least 132 columns and at least 28 rows. In FreeBSD, there's a utility called 'vidcontrol' that you could attempt to use in a script... I'm not familiar enough with OpenBSD or NetBSD to tell you if it has the same utility or different one.

Once you've provided a display with enough rows and columns, you should be able to simply call TN5250 with env.TERM set to IBM-3477-FC, and it should work. Though, honestly, I haven't tried it because none of the video cards I use for BSD have support for 132 columns in console mode.


fschnittke@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Hi:

I'm new to the TN5250 application. I like what I see so far but I'm curious about one thing. In order to get 132 columns, do I have to be using xt5250?

Currently, I'm trying to use just TN5250 without X11 on either OpenBSD or NetBSD, but font changes don't seem to work. I've got a .tn5250rc file that looks something like this:

as400{
host = HOST
env.TERM = IBM-3477-FC
map = 37
font_80=-*-fixed-*-*-*-*-*-200-75-100-*-*-*-*
font_132=-*-fixed-*-*-*-*-*-200-75-100-*-*-*-* #(Not sure why these would be the same)

#font_80=10x20
#font_132=6x13
}

dsp01 {
host = 10.1.1.1
font_80=10x20
font_132=6x13
env.DEVNAME=Openbsd
env.TERM=IBM-3477-FC
}

The other thing is, I don't know what fonts are available to either of these operating systems when running in console mode.

Any suggestions would be appreciated....
Regards, Fred Schnittke MCSE, MCP,
Network Administrator
VETERINARY PURCHASING company limited